


oh bright thirty

by vulturer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulturer/pseuds/vulturer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She's poisoned, maimed, sleep-deprived, delirious, starving, dehydrated, shot, beaten, and reeks to the high skies, and this is the best she's felt in three weeks. Steaks, smokes, and a terrifying babe.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>"Wish those ninnies had had wine."</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>"Revolution is not a dinner party."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh bright thirty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saccharineSylph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saccharineSylph/gifts).



_________________________

  


The skyline is just beginning to nibble the sun when Aradia Megido wakes up. There's no room to stretch, just enough to scoot out of the troll-sized notch she had found folded into a pile of boulders. The ridges scrape against her sleep-sensitive skin, pulling at her filthy fatigues and pouches. This side of the boulder is in shade, still a little warm as she heaves herself out of the pocket. She hisses happily through her teeth at the crackling in her back and the tight, rubber-band pull of her muscles easing back out. The stale sopor slug curled around her throat comes unstuck with soft, wet pops when she gingerly tugs at it. It curls in on itself and she drops it into its battered, but clean tin, checking the seal. There's still plenty of perigees left before the slug expires, even if it's starting feel a little funky. Like a film on old juice. She sets the tin on a flat ledge and unscrews the cap of her canteen, then tips some water onto the slug before sealing it up and stuffing it back in it's pouch on her thigh. She spits out the scum from her mouth and hops down to squat next to a little stream, cupping her hands in the water, drawing it up to her lips and scrubbing it over her dirt-streaked face. It's _freezing._

"D'you sleep good?"

"Mmm," she hums and stands up, linking her fingers together and raising them high above her head in another long stretch. She cocks her head and grins wide at a lanky, ethereal shimmer floating a few feet away. He nods, pressing his lips together in a curt, polite reply and raises a hand awkwardly.

"Evening."

"Good evening, Mr. Casper!"

"Ha ha."

"It's funny every time, don't lie."

He snuffs and shakes his head a little, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his fatigues. Aradia loves that, how they still have their ticks. Scratching their noses or picking their nails. Wiping their eyes, even. It's adorable.

"So what's, um. On the agenda today."

"Have you ever had a dream so vivid that when you woke up, you believed it was real for a few seconds?"

"Yeah, I mean. I guess? Back when."

"It's sort of scary, isn't it?"

"Can be. Yeah. Did you just...?"

"I sleep great now. But, like you said," she gestures at him, "Back when. Phoo, I betcha I had one of those every night."

"About what?"

"Oh, you know. People. Doing things."

"That's... vague."

She flashes him a killer smile and leans over to lace up her muddy boots. "I am _starving._ Today's agenda is eating."

"I saw a bunch of snoutbeasts. East-ish?"

"Excellent! I'm going to eat five of them." She shoulders her rifle and marches east-ish, the floating ghost boy close behind.

\- - -

It's not that Vriska Serket has never been deployed in a hot zone, or had to go on the run from a few dozen people who wanted to kill her and make a big sensationalist to-do about it, but this is something else entirely. This is the kind of thing that only happens to chicks in the blockbusters. The ones who wear lots of spandex and you can only see their spiky heels in the scenes where they're strutting. Vriska kind of feels like one of those chicks right now, although far less glamorous. She's got like eight days of silt in her socks and her hair is just one giant knot. Hard to get her makeup looking snazzy when she's rolling in mud and wading through rivers and throwing up everything she stuffs in her mouth. At least it'll be a good story. You know. Jacking one of the most powerful weapons in the sector and escaping the base. _Successfully._

Her entire body is basically raw nerves, though. Her mouth is a cactus and there's probably slitherbeasts growing inside her skin, sometimes cool and slippery, sometimes roiling lava and teeth, electric teeth. The ultra wide view from her compound eye is serving her okay, but the live eye has decided to take a vacation and do whatever the fuck. Go fogged and hazy, focus on the wrong things. Be generally dumb and worthless. When it's extra bogus, she slips her eyepatch over it and tries to walk without tripping into a canyon even though the world is curved and blown through the eight lenses, like looking through a grainy glass sphere while plastered. She is going to demand a new one when she gets home. Made of gold. With little gems around the lenses spelling out _COMMODORE STONE COLD._

And a new arm too. With a plasma cannon. She'll retire at fifteen and sit on a porch melting craters into antlerbeasts.

\- - -

"I sense inquisitions, Kashka," Aradia states around a bite of dripping meat, freshly charred.

"You're very secretive."

"A bit of a character flaw, I admit," she laughs, gesturing with the meaty bone, flinging juice. "But honestly, where's the fun in honesty?"

"No, I didn't mean it that way," the ghost says, waving his hands. "It's fine. Just an... observation, I guess."

"Not much else to do out here in Toe-lint, Nowhere, mm?"

"Right."

"Well, I observe that youuuuu are very," she says and points the bone at him, wiggling it a little, "translucent!"

Kashka snorts and looks around, checking the path. Aradia stops and watches him thoughtfully for a moment, ticking her eyebrows up at his pause. The trees are burned dark and leafless, the blue flesh of the trunks just peeking through at spots. Kashka reaches out a hand to touch them and his fingers pass through; his face twitches with a thought and he turns to nod at Aradia, who returns it with a knowing smile.

"You can feel them too, can't you," he says, staring as she passes him.

"A few! Residue, mostly. Looks like the rumors were right."

"Rumors?"

"Of what happened here."

"Oh, yeah. Yeah those were pretty much. Pretty spot on. You heard the rumors? Where were you?"

"At Thorns Gorge."

"Oh shit. That far?"

"I'm a persistent traveler. Especially," she hops over a fallen log, "when I have a goal in mind."

"Orders?"

"Ehhhhh," she sounds, wobbling a hand streaked with juice and black specks of burned meat.

"More secrets."

"Ding ding!"

"Based on... other rumors?"

"And some reliable stuff. It's all the very definition of complicated."

"You don't sound too put out about it."

"Nah, it's fun! Keeps me on my toes."

"Well. Uh. Your toes should go this way," he says with a little shrug of his shoulders and flicks his hand at a path that winds between mountains, cut gently by a river.

\- - -

"Mother _fuckerrrrr!"_ Vriska screams at her leg; it had to go and get _shot,_ making the slog through the muggy forest eight million times more difficult than it should have been, even without necessary rations and camping stuff. This is her... nth night without sopor or supplement and her arms and legs are starting to feel syrupy, her thinkpan a little stir-fried. The floor keeps jumping away from her feet and blue pillars shoulder-check her, scratching at her arms. Their claws are rough and spiky, leaving shallow scratches and getting caught in her clothes and hair. The sky is starry soup, churning and churning.

And to think, a few days ago she was all decked out and fabulous, with the pins and the buttons and the shoulder things, the kinds with the tassels. Hot _damn,_ she had cut a fucking _figure._ Slyest chick on the whole damned ship, and then some, what with the cunning and the wiles. She had slipped in like a oiled up scalpel, right through the crack that went to the core of imperial military intelligence. Just barely had a chance to savor it before she had to slip back out.

But she figures a few more days headed south and she'll eventually hit the beach. Then she could follow along the sand where the forest ended, maybe dip her feet in the tide pools, eat a few coconuts, avoid getting spotted by scout crafts or camps. Have a ball of a time before crawling back into civilization. Whichever direction she headed, she'd hit a major port city where she could disappear, flush her system of the absolutely delightful toxins that were swimming in it, get re-intoxicated with more recreational poisons, and worm her way back into the fight. This time, flip-side. Set fire to the system just to watch it burn. Yo-ho-ho.

\- - -

The two days that Aradia and Kashka spend trekking through the mountains are actually downright pleasant, with crisp air and plenty of shaded spots for Aradia to curl up in the shade, her sleep deep and dream-filled. The river is cold with constant snowmelt and crystal clean. Aradia washes her clothes for the first time in several nights with a bar of cheap soap, dunks herself in while she's waiting for them to dry. 

"Stop laughing, I only screamed once."

"I counted three."

"Probably an echo. Acoustics," she flicks her hand at the towering mountains.

"I mean. I'm not saying that's bad. Only like two of my unit could go in for more than five seconds. Everyone screamed."

"Including you?"

"Sure. 'S freezing. Jischi, though, she stayed in for a whole minute. Cleaned us out our caegars."

"Jischi... your moirail, yes?"

"Yeah."

The path turns rocky and steep and Aradia climbs nimbly, following Kashka's directions as he points out handholds and sudden drop-offs. Her boot slips once, but she just ends up wedged in between two boulders for a minute, laughing as Kashka panics and tries to grab at her hands. When she unsticks, she pats the dirt and moss off of her ass and walks through Kashka, pausing for the briefest moment to remind him that she's peachy. He slows way down, taking time to find the safest route until she playfully chews him out. Then his shoulders loosen a little and they crest the rocky hill. Below them, beneath vine-encrusted cliffs, the river forks off. Aradia pulls out a paper map ("laugh it up, spooky, but paper never runs out of juice!") and finds the fork, dragging her blunt claw along the blue line until it spills into the ocean. Kashka follows, scratching his lip with a thumbnail.

"Look about right?" Aradia asks and he nods.

"Yeah. Yeah, there some chatter about the uh... what do you call it," he puts his finger through the spot where the blue line opens up into smooth space.

"Estuary."

"That. There was a fight. Not a big one, but... notable."

"Where, two weeks ago, a squad of Hers was decimated. No rebel bodies found."

"Right."

"Still sounds promising," she folds up the map and pockets it. 

"I'm guessing, cause of your interest in the fight... You're looking for the chick? Who killed them. Supposedly."

"Questions, questions! Remember the thing about it being a secret?" but she smiles good-naturedly, more curious at his curiosity than offended. So he pushes.

"I'm already dead, what harm can I do."

"That's your problem! You're traveling with a walking, talking, living troll, aren't you? One who may go on to make decisions based off of information that _you_ provide, or directions that _you_ suggest, which in turn could go on to do quite a lot of harm, couldn't she?"

"Yeah, okay."

"That's not to say it's just _your_ problem though, I mean this is everywhere, affects everyone. It is a prevalent misconception and a naive assumption made hastily, because it's far easier to ignore than to accept."

"That what?"

"That dead men tell tales," she says gravely and then lights up in a grin. Kashka groans. She lets out a bright laugh and looks incredibly pleased with herself. "Though widespread misunderstanding does make it much more fun and easy for me to take advantage of, that's for sure."

"Like you're doing now."

"Absolutely! You've been indispensable," she waggles her eyebrows at him. "I guess I am a special case, too. Seeing as how, well. I have a certain... appreciation? For the postmortem stuff."

"Like the animal bones in your pocket."

"You noticed! You are free to think of it as weirdo mysticism, if you like."

"I don't think I have room to talk."

"No, you certainly don't!"

The mountain starts to slope down. Aradia slides and hops over fallen logs and piles of dried leaves, reaching out to grab at tree trunks and exposed roots to slow her descent. Leaves and twigs get stuck in her braid when she rolls.

"What did you mean? 'Special case,'" Kashka asks, drifting after her as she skids down a steeper slope. She has to jog a few steps at the end because of the momentum and then jumps over a bulbous, knotted limb of a huge tree, dotted with mushrooms.

"Ever hear of the Charge Debacle?" she says, light with breath.

"Well yeah, everyone has. Why?"

She stops and taps her fingers against her lips, humming. "A dilemma presents itself. Do I trust the dead man? Because, like he says, everyone's heard, buuuut..."

"I won't say anything."

"That I _definitely_ can't know for sure," she counters, without malice. "But does it really matter? I'm being paranoid for the sake of argument."

"You were there. At the Debacle."

She says nothing, merely waits.

"So... you were in the Charge Company? I'm guessing. Cause of your blood," he presses, watching her with steady wide eyes. "Holy shit. And you fought the Scourge Unit at Zephyr Cliffs. And, ah. Lost."

"Spectacularly," she says, matter-of-fact, and nods once at him, signaling him to continue. He shakes his head in disbelief; he's chatting about an infamous battle with a living Charge soldier like it was a game of poker.

"So you. You appreciate death because of what you saw there?"

"Partly. More because of what happened _after_ said event. But it's all one big mess, really," she shrugs.  He points at her suddenly, shakes his finger, mouth opening in epiphany.

"You can see me."

"Yes, Casper. I can see dead people," she says in a stage whisper, a grin pulling at her mouth, exposing wet flat teeth.

"You're the. The goddamn whisperer. You're Megido."

She looks pleasantly impressed at the leap and Kashka nearly splutters.

"But you died! Fucking hell."

"For a while, yes."

"So how did you... that doesn't make any sense. That's like. Magic or some shit."

She claps and makes jazz hands. He stares at her.

"Hey, stranger things have happened! _You_ are a ghost. Some people can read minds! I'd say a little healthy resurrection isn't too far out of line."

"That's crazy."

"Says the _ghost!"_

"Okay, zombie," he's grinning, real and wide, completely in awe. 

"Pshaw, at least I'm not a sun eater. I am quite free of fungus and spores, thank you _very_ much!"

"Whatever you say." 

\- - -

Sugary juice from the coconut sluices down her chin, leaking out of her open mouth and a bullet hole through the other side of the shell. She coughs once, gags a little at the kick-in-the-jaw sickly sweetness, only throws up a teeny bit. Then she smacks the nut against the sand and twists, getting it loosely set, before shooting it a few more times with a little pistol until it cracks open. Her metal arm is dead and starting to harbor it's own little colony of bright yellow moss, but her good hand's got some nice claws to gouge the meat out of the busted shell. She eats until she feels like she's going to die. Tropical overdose. 

She wakes up to a buzzing roar and spits sand out of her mouth, rolling over to face the sky. The sound vibrates down through the tree roots, making pebbles clatter on the rocks like hissing applause. It slides overhead and blooms out into a dozen different pitches, from a heavy drone that rustles the leaves, to a whine that splices through her head to the dead center. There's a sharp moment where nostalgia, that old friend fury, kicks her in teeth. Surrounded by noise and fear and vibrating air, she tenses in anticipation of a good old haunting, or some supernatural pop that would finish the job this time. Time's up. Then the droning starts to recoil, moving on to shake up the rest of the beach. She pushes up on her good arm and slumps back against the trunk, watches the ship pass by, thinking, _holy shit, holy fucking shit._

When the noise is just a wasp's afterthought, she leans over to drag the sack of loot from the fight closer and feels inside for a slender wooden box. It opens and her fingers close around a light, oily roll of brown paper, which she sticks in her mouth. Six matches snap when she strikes them and she starts to drool around the cigar before one finally catches, a bright flash of terror in the darkness. If someone spots the flame, fine. She's got the munitions of twenty trolls for a nest and a metal eye that hardly misses.

\- - -

"Well, I would venture to guess that we're on the right track," Aradia says flippantly. The only bodies left are the ones in pieces; the rest of them presumabely inhabited by fungus, probably miles away buried in the sand, waiting for morning light. Kashka would have liked to say that he was shocked and unnerved by the scene before them, but really it's just the same shit, different night. He has seen his comrades jerk under greeting bullets, and that was comedy hour compared to the stories he heard about the courtblocks. Blood on the sand is just blood on the sand. "Look, their guns are missing."

"Think the chick took 'em with?"

"She's got very sticky fingers."

"So she does exist. And you know her personally."

"Gasp! You have unveiled too much information, my friend, far too much for your own good. Now, I'm afraid I must kill you."

Kashka turns to look at her blankly. "Hilarious."

"I'm a laugh factory," she says with a shrug, showing teeth, and walks south along the beach through the decimated troops.

"So why are you looking for her?"

"You just can't get enough of my secrets, can you."

"Just killing time."

She hums, laughing to herself under her breath. She's silent then for a while and he doesn't push, just flies up a couple hundred feet to look at the land and seascape. Far to the southeast across the ocean is a diffuse warm glow; a city, probably. When he comes back down, Aradia is waiting patiently and looks resigned, sadly almost. 

"She hurt someone very close to me, but. Hmm. Don't know if I'm going to say much more than that."

Kashka looks over and his eyes flicker over her, "That sounds like a goodbye."

"Yes, I'm afraid so! You've led me far and I think I can take it from here. I'm sorry I can't take you with me. I like you! But I can't trust you."

"That's okay. I, uh. Get that it's 'can't,' not 'don't.'"

"A subtle distinction. But I'm so glad you understand," she says and looks at him thoughtfully for a long moment, nodding slowly. "You'll find Jischi again, someday. I promise."

"What," he flails his hands and his eyes fly open. "Wait, how? How?"

"Just don't stop searching." He swears her eyes see past him. He's suddenly more afraid of her than he was when he first met her and he can almost feel her hand against his cheek, even though it's just touching air. She's doing something weird with her brain, kind of pushing him. Or thinking her way through him. Like she's cutting ties, but shoving him the right direction. He knows he won't ever see her again. She gives him her most brilliant grin yet. "Don't rest in peace."

\- - -

She's on the deck talking to Terezi about the timing of a siege, the enemy fleet and the port city that lies beyond, and a white flash distracts her; it's the sun glinting off of the gold cup she has in her hand. They are standing in the sunlight. Terezi is saying something about submarine and Vriska laughs. The ship pitches and wet seaweed smacks against her face, water gets in her nose, and then the blinding light goes dim and everything is swimming and she leans over to dry heave. Something hard thumps against her back and she hears chuckling; she throws a fist out, cause _hell_ if she's going to die while hurling, but her knuckles just tap gently against the figure, like a cute little fist bump. She curses. It comes out a slushy and weird. Hands grab her shoulders and forcefully upright her, pitching the ground beneath her. Her vision swings and lands on Aradia fricking Megido, looking like she got the mother lode of mother lodes on Perigee's Eve.

"Gotcha."

Vriska breathes, "Son of a bi—" and blacks out.

\- - -

Somethings smells amazing. Like heat and burning wood, seared through with honey. Like a campfire roasting and ships ablaze, of victory and fear, and, "Hey. Hey! Those are _mine!"_

Aradia blows a few rings and lightly says, "These things'll kill you, you know." Vriska watches them drift and twist and dissipate from her vantage point on her back. She whines pathetically until a stick is in jammed into her mouth and she's being pulled up and plopped against a tree trunk. A flame appears at the tip and she looks up, straight into a permanently amused stare, Aradia's left cheek dimpling around the cigar held by her molars. There are slight shadows under her eyes, but her shoulders are just as strong, and Vriska turns her face to blow out smoke. It's not a thank you, but it's not a fight either.

Aradia unzips a pocket on her pack and pulls out a lumpy package of twine-wrapped wax paper that hits Vriska's chest with a heavy thump. Vriska sets the cigar carefully in her sharp teeth and pulls a switchblade from a pocket on her thigh, flicking it out with a little snick, and saws at the string. She almost chews right through the cigar when the paper opens to reveal magnificently bloody meat. Aradia leans forward to pluck the stick from her mouth so she could tear a nearly choking bite out of the slab. She's poisoned, maimed, sleep-deprived, delirious, starving, dehydrated, shot, beaten, and reeks to the high skies, and this is the best she's felt in three weeks. Steaks, smokes, and a terrifying babe.

"Wish those ninnies had had wine."

"Revolution is not a dinner party."

"More like shitty stand-up," Vriska says. She takes another chomp of the meat and talks around it, "It's been a bazillion sweeps, Megido. Aren't you gonna tell me I look like ass?"

"No, you look fantastic," she says and grins. "I'm digging the arm fungus."

Vriska flips her a bird. "How'd you find me?"

"Heard a rumor, followed a hunch."

_"Why'd_ you find me?"

"Well for one, I wanted to hear, from your own mouth, a very riveting tale explaining your defection."

"I didn't defect!"

"Bullshit you didn't."

"I fucking _didn't!_ Do you even know the meaning of subterfuge? It's not like I could just waltz up into Her Imperious asshole and fiddle with the knobs. Had to get all buttered up first, _then_ snatch the secret weapon."

"So you deemed occasional contact and hints as to what the hell you were to doing to be necessary sacrifices."

"Well, yeah. I had to be convincing."

"Well congratulations, you convinced so well that _all of us_ thought you were another ring stacked onto her right hand."

"I was, _necessarily,_ and now I'm _not."_

Aradia smashes her cigar into the sand and twists, crushing the remainder in her fingers. "I don't know whether to drag you back to base for the spectacle, or to bury you myself."

"I'd haunt you."

"I'm shaking."

"I'd haunt your ass so hard, you'd be labeled a paranormal go-see."

"My ass is pretty great, isn't it."

Vriska is slumping to her left, the cigar falling from her teeth and charring the fabric over her stomach. She sees out of a keyhole of focus, the rest blown bright and hazy like overexposed film, which is funny. She had felt fine. The ground had been solid underneath her butt and the sky was up. Her cheek stings, faint at first, like a little bug bite, but grows sharper and faster. She shakes her head and hot pain swells up to her head like marshmallow in a microwave, sticking to the back of her neck, oozing out. Her shoulder is pinned to the tree by a firm, calloused hand, clenching hard into her bones. Her eyes look at ten random places before falling where she pointed them, at Aradia's scary huge horns.

"Vriska. _Vriska."_

"I killed a lot of people, huh."

"I know. It's how I found you."

"Yeah. Wow. You're scary."

"Same to you. You did all of that with this secret weapon?"

"What? No. I shot 'em. With their own weapons. Assholes."

"Nice shooting."

"I know. And secret weapon, what the actual. Stupid. Oh, but I did steal something really cool. What I got in for."

"What's that?"

"Access codes to the GAN and blueprints for Her fleet. Ships. Other stuff."

"Where are they?"

"Kept the chip wedged up my chute this whole time. Brilliant, I know."

"Can't be, you're far too sexy for someone to pass up a cavity search."

"Screw the moon. It was in my fucking pocket, what do you think."

"I think that's a risky spot for information that ruinous."

"The pocket had velcro."

"Oh, well no problem, then!"

"Nnnnope."

"Vriska?"

"Yeah, Megido?"

"You are unbelievable."

"Thanks."

With Aradia dragging Vriska along, good arm curled around her shoulders, they almost make it to the city. An unmanned scoutcraft on its programmed flight plan whistles by them, doubles back, and gets a half scan before popping under a spray of bullets and plummeting into the sand. Less than an hour later, a team comes to check on the craft and immediately start shouting into their comm-devices about coming under fire, an ambush, requesting backup. Backup is a regiment of bluebloods with bigger guns; Aradia and Vriska get thrown into a ship and zipped off to a temporary holding cell.

In forty-eight hours, the hallways are teeming with ghosts, spontaneously glassy-eyed traitors, and exploding things. In the middle of the pandemonium, no one notices a humvee leave the area, driving off to the south, blazing its way toward a fortress that belongs to an ex-heiress of powerful stature.

\- - -

Fort Marterra is a military base that had been added on the port city of Lichens as a well-armed afterthought, right next to a little neighborhood of middling bloods that made their living off of import/export transportation and various kinds of fishing. It had gotten mortar shells dumped on it once during the Blood War, and three times since for various reasons such as harboring and wholly accepting exiled highbloods who denounced the hemocaste, smuggling cheap and plentiful arms and ammunition, and a bacterial infection that had made a particular type of fish taste a bit sour. After each razing, the city rebuilt itself back up and bigger as a big _piss off_ to anyone who decided to bomb it further. 

Under the guise of being allied to Her Imperious Condescension and Her worldview, Feferi Peixes is a secret queen. She had dodged an assassination by publicly relinquishing any desires for the throne, but her loyalty to the Empress is a careful mask that hides plotting, scheming, and a insurrection that grows in strength with every day. Currently her rebellion is neck deep in paperwork.

"Who here's fluid in clown," Feferi groans, smacking a colorful missive with the back of her hand. "What the shell is this. I can't even."

"Yo," Oethuk shouts from the end of the table, holding up a hand. Feferi passes the stack of collapsed cereal boxes, papers torn from books, and graffiti covered posters his way. Vayisa puts a document in front of her, "Needs your mark, boss," that she signs automatically and as soon as the final flourish is on the paper, Pombel swoops in to inform her that the battle for Maw Gulf is turning very quickly in favor of the rebellion. She claps her hand on his shoulder and grins.

"Best news I've heard all day."

"Yes, ma'am," Pombel agrees.

"Has word from Nepeta and crew come in yet?"

"Yes, ma'am, I was about to give you that next," he replies and hands her a transcript of Nepeta's message, which reports today's increase in troops by a dozen, loss of two, and a short list of new obscenities and metaphors that Karkat had come up with earlier this evening, which include _god's great whack off festival_ and _shit-blower._ There's a usual sweet greeting from Tavros and his report on troop morale.

An hour or so of good and bad news, signatures, approval, and chatter passes before a couple of trolls come barreling into the war room, stumbling and panting. Deleka tries to talk twice, but doubles over to hold his knees and catch his breath. Ietrey thumps him on the back and holds up her hand, eyes closed, and breathes until she can clearly say, "Corporal Megido and Commodore Serket just drove a humvee onto the grounds."

The room is silent and all eyes seem to turn inwards toward Feferi, who blinks twice.

"I'm sorry. Did you just say that Aradia and Vriska just—"

"Just demolished the gate—"

"They drove—"

"Into the base—"

"They're here? _Alive?"_  

"Yes milady," Deleka says and Ietrey is nodding, a stupefied look on her face. They immediately split apart to make room for Feferi, who's stomping just about shakes the entire stronghold with her fury. It has been more than half a sweep since Feferi last heard a single peep from Vriska and even longer since she heard anything from Eridan and Terezi, who have been worming into Her system the old fashioned way; from the bottom up. The loss of contact was partly to maintain a believable cover as an actual, unsympathetic member of the Imperial forces, but there had also been annoying difficulty with the Greater Alternian Network, or GAN, which was the communications system that everyone fighting under Her command was forced to used. It was combed and tracked and teeming with censorship, which rendered it impossible to use for talk of revolution. Hackers could only do so much before they tripped systems put in place by other hackers; an endless pissing contest that always ended up right back where it started. The growing distance had been gradual, but absolute, and Feferi had held out for them for as long as she justifiably could before furiously admitting that they had defected.

And now Vriska Serket, co-commander of the Scourge Unit and eminent usefulness to the Condesce's manifesto, is standing in Feferi's base of operations, looking like a wiggler's biology experiment gone on the lam.

"Where. Have. You. _Been,"_ Feferi says, stomping on each word, until she stands in front of Vriska, towering even though she's just a few inches taller. Vriska holds up a little piece of black plastic, a stick of memory, and falls face-first to the floor. Aradia snorts and laughs in what is definitely twisted pleasure. Feferi rounds on her, "And where the hell have _you_ been? It's been weeks."

Aradia just grins at her, "Permission to approach?"

"Ugh, cut that out," she sighs and Aradia wraps her strong arms around her chest, laughing. "You smell horrible."

"Vriska smells worse."

"I can't believe you," she says and mashes her mouth against Aradia's angrily. When she pulls back, Aradia is bursting with laughter, and she feels it spreading to her, "I cannot even _believe_ you. How the heck did you find her?"

"That is a story," she says and trolls suddenly spill from all doors in the room to see with their own eyes. Crackling energy parts a cluster of people and Sollux comes sliding through barefoot, shirt dripping with coffee, and eyes alight.

"Get the fuck out of the way, where's FF, FF someone said AA is here? Oh shitsauce on a fucking cracker," he launches at Aradia like a bundle of tree branches and she locks her arms around his middle, spinning in a pirouette of legs and electricity. "Where have you fucking been all my life."

"Adventuring with ghosts, getting captured by imperials, the usual!"

"You're out of your goddamn pan, holy _shit_ it's good to see you."

"We brought you a present," she says and leans over to pluck the memory from Vriska's unconscious fingers. A sudden clap of noise makes the whole room jump three feet and Equius bursts through, holding a door handle, frowning and covered in grease with half a dozen mechanics behind him looking like they dropped everything immediately to come running. Equius looks from Aradia to Vriska and back up again, and opens his mouth to say something. It dies in his throat and Aradia waves. "Perfect timing! This is for you too." She holds up the memory stick and puts her boot on Vriska's butt, nudging her like a sack of produce. She turns around for everyone to see, milking the drama of the moment, and says hungrily, "A stolen key."

\- - -

All of her insides are burning from the center out, starting deep in her chest, working up to her head like a pressure cooker, surrounding and hot. She flails for purchase and her limbs move excruciatingly slow, like they're stuck in a vat of warm honey, and she breaks the surface gasping for breath as if it were her very first in a hundred sweeps. Her live arm eventually does what she tells it to do and wipes hair away from her eye. She's naked in a giant ablution trap filled with steaming water. Her ecosystem of a dead metal arm is missing. Feferi is standing outside of the trap with her pants and sleeves rolled up, whipcord calves angry and taught, arms crossed to show of the ropes of muscle in her arms, and eyes bright and pink with heat and anger.

"Why do you have clothes on," Vriska says. "I'm naked. You should be naked."

"You're not exactly in a position to demand things, Commodore."

"I put forth the royal entreaty that you get naked."

"I missed you, you giant sack of slime. I thought you were _dead."_

"Yeah, well. I wasn't," Vriska says and glares at the water. 

"No, you were off commanding fleets and stomping around in brand new boots and jacking off Her Condescension and _not talking to us."_

"I couldn't use the network, it's crawling with—"

_"Half_ a glubbing sweep, Vriska!"

"I couldn't! Talk!"

"I don't give a _ship!"_ Feferi screams and water blooms up over Vriska's face, splashing over the side of the trap. Feferi pins Vriska against the side of the trap and glares hot knives of betrayal into her, wedging in between Vriska's legs with an easy gliding strength. "All this time, I thought you had defected from me. I didn't like that thought, Commodore."

"I was doing it for you," Vriska grits out between her teeth, dizzy and light-headed with the steam.

"And Terezi? Is she sentencing trolls to hang for me?" she breathes on Vriska's face, snarling with her teeth bared. "Eridan? Is Eridan even alive still? I wouldn't know because I haven't heard from you in _half a sweep,_ Commodore. Is Eridan still fighting for me?"

"We're all," Vriska starts and hisses as Feferi's claws dig into her arm, her hip. "We're all. Still yours."

It hangs heavy between them, like a tangled chain, and when Feferi pulls back to glare into Vriska's eye, it pulls tight. Vriska almost laughs; they're so similar, her and the Condesce, eyes sparkling like gems cut to spikes. But. Still just. Different enough to matter. There had been a point where Vriska swore Eridan really had switched sides, seduced by the overwhelming presence of the empress, but she had watched him drag himself inside before the sun rose covered in wounds, dripping with water, feverishly muttering tactics under his breath. He had thrown the Crosshairs to the floor and slumped back against the wall, knuckling dirt out of his eyes, and went silent for a long moment. Terezi had slipped into the room and sat down on the floor near them, wordless and smooth, sharply dressed and hardened until enough time passed for her to relax and hug her knees. 

"The rebellion's gettin' bigger," Eridan said finally, rubbing at the stubble on his jaw. "I got a message about groups poppin' up all along the coast. Talkin' about uprisin'. Rumors about a girl with claws, a short mutant with a potty mouth, and a big guy with robo-legs."

He laughed humorlessly and scrubbed his hands over his face, knocked his head against the wall. Terezi took a deep breath, blew it out slowly between her lips. Vriska realized she was nodding and clenched her fists. The plans were still in motion. She punched the floor and laughed.

Next to Feferi's tall and curving muscles, Vriska is too skinny and bruised blue with exhaustion, her indignant stare burning bright. Feferi runs her hand over the temporary replacement eye in Vriska's head, slides down her neck and touches the bare mechanics of her shoulder. She slides her other hand down to Vriska's thigh that's still tight like she remembers, but far too weak, and digs in again. Vriska's stare doesn't waver and the air collapses out of Feferi's body.

"Don't ever do that again," Feferi warns, pulling her claws from Vriska's skin and sliding her palm along the muscles instead. A sigh eases out of Vriska at the touch and her shoulders droop, legs falling open loosely.

"Soooo..." Vriska sounds, looking down into the churning water, "Now that your clothes are wet..." She meant for it to come out sexy and sly, but she feels her face betraying her with a relieved and excited smile, like a wiggler that's been rewarded by their lusus for doing a good job. She tries to undo a button, laughing breathlessly, "Not enough naked."

Feferi scoffs and rolls her eyes, but leans back to unbutton her shirt, staring down her nose, all beautiful severity.  Vriska bets this is the angriest strip-tease anyone's ever gotten and she relaxes back against the trap, throwing her head back in a cackle. She pulls at Feferi's waistband with her good hand and gets slapped away. The clothes hit the floor with heavy, wet smacks, and Vriska grins up.

"I'm scouring you first," Feferi declares with a smirk and Vriska's smile disappears into betrayal.

"Awww, _whaaaaat—"_

"You smell like the bottom of a dumpster. You smell like the stomach of a dead shark."

The door to the ablution block swings open and Aradia strolls in looking tired and pleased, munching on a disgusting looking muffin. She makes a delighted noise at the sight of the trap full of hot water and naked girls and starts stripping on the way, leaving a trail of smelly, dirty, definitely-going-to-be-burned fatigues. She falls backward into the trap and water splashes everywhere, swelling over the side and flooding the block. She pops up and drapes herself on Feferi's back, grinning wide, eyes closed. 

"I don't know where to even start with your hair," Feferi says with a sigh and scrubs dirt off of Vriska's face. "I'll just shave you both."

\- - -

Sollux, Equius, and their respective cohorts of brilliant nerds are nearly glowing with excitement when Feferi, Aradia, and Vriska emerge with clean clothes and secret hickies. Apparently the codes to the GAN got Sollux right to the arteries of the network and he had been sending test messages back and forth to Kanaya for half an hour without pinging on anyone's radar. He had even sent one to Eridan to freak him out and had received a furious and panicked response before Eridan realized that Vriska must have made it back alive. Then he had blocked Sollux. The overall result was a brilliant success.

"The revolution is live, fuckers. And you won't even _believe_ what EQ's cooking up," Sollux says, his voice rapid and slushy with energy, shoving Feferi in his direction.

"These designs are incredibly outdated. The Battleship Condescension itself seems to be maintained simply for sentimental reasons, look the engine block is all the way in the back of the ship, it's ludicrous," Equius rambles and tries very hard not to rip his copy of the design. His mechanics are all circled around him like a gang, nodding and laughing incredulously along with him, and Feferi has to order them to slow down and explain what the hell they were talking about, in actual speech. Equius shakes the print and ignores how it rips right down the middle, "First of all, we can build superior machinery to this. This is wiggler's play. Secondly, if you. Well. Get us inside somehow, perhaps in the distant future when such an action is more tactically viable—"

"The point, Equius."

"We can take this fleet apart," and his face breaks out in an honest, uncontrollable grin. "We are lesser in volume, but far more sophisticated in technique, and. Just. Their defenses are flimsy and easily overcome now that we know how they are constructed."

Sollux howls and fires off bursts of electric triumph and for the first time in a very long time, Feferi feels her movement start to _move_ , like a stagnant ocean being tipped forward gently, slow at first but unstoppable in eventuality. She clamps down on it and starts calling out orders and the entire base buzzes magnificently like a kicked beehive.

Several weeks later, the radars scream with warnings of incoming missiles and enemy ships and the base scrambles to evacuate before the attack commences. Most of the trolls get out and escape in a surge of vehicles on land, in the air, slipping down underneath the surface of the ocean to escape before Imperial submarines launched torpedoes. The event is panicked, destructive, and infuriating, but Feferi finds it in herself to stay calm with the wind whipping at her face, Aradia staring wide-eyed through the windshield with tight hands on the wheel, and Vriska screaming vicious taunts and curses and solemn promises at the sky, because we've got you fuckers, we've got you in our sights and you can't stop the noise, you can't stop what's coming to you.


End file.
